"Oh, definitely! That one, yeah! I remember that!" Milanor energetically exclaimed while holding the cheeseburger he was eating. "Miss Daphine was the one that almost got crushed by falling debris, right? I recall that she was often being a hazard to people around her."
"Yes, you do remember! She was clumsy as hell and causes a lot of problems for the team!" The woman they stumbled on earlier in the store, Miss Irina, enthusiastically agreed with what he said.
When she told them her identity, Milanor finally remembered their previous association. She was one of the members of the logistic and supply team he and several mercenaries from Monoceros were tasked to defend during the exploration of Mod Charlotte.
After dealing with the Pirate Lord Razonar, the Empire's government requested a preliminary investigation into the lost city that the pirate had used as a hideout. It was a race against time, as the city could become a foundation for the Empire's territorial claim. Organizing an official state investigation committee would take too long and risk other nations sabotaging the site, as such, they had no choice but to rely on some civilian third parties.
Miss Irina and her organization, along with Milanor and some hired guns from Monoceros, were some of these third parties.
"But still, what an incredible coincidence for me to meet that arrogant little rascal in this remote place. You have grown very tall, aren't you?"
"I was just about to enter my growth spurt back then! And don't call me a little rascal…"
"Oh? You won't deny the arrogant part?"
"Well… Think of it as a… teen rebellious phase." Milanor had to admit that he was acting pretty cringy during his early years. With some of his behaviors that he could still remember clearly, he knew that if he were to meet his younger self today, he might just punch him out of sheer annoyance.
Although in defense of Little Milanor, he was just imitating his even more cringy dad (who was a grown man), so you could blame his influence.
"You spent a lot of time with Milanor on that planet, Miss Irina?" asked Fianna, who was sitting next to him. Beside her on the other side sat Naya, quietly enjoying the fast food she ordered.
They were all sitting at one of the tables inside a fast food joint close to the grocery store where they met Miss Irina. After introducing herself, she had gotten excited to meet the eccentric teenage freelancer she had worked together five years ago. It was a miraculous encounter, she explained.
It would be hard to disagree with her when you consider the vast cosmos and the hundreds of billions of people inhabiting it. Fianna, always being true to herself, suggested they hang out in nearby restaurants (although the closest one was this burger place), and so here they were. The Helios crew hadn't had breakfast before they left the ship earlier too, so this was perfect.
"Hmm… I wonder if you can consider one month a long time or not. We had a job to do, you know? Still, whenever we had breaks some of my colleagues would play around with Little Miles here. He was just the darling little warrior, we all thought. Always acting proud and haughty and tough, pretending to be a bigger person than his real size might suggest."
"T-That's how all of you thought of me back then?" Learning his past impression all these years later had gotten him pretty embarrassed.
"Oh, we all know that you were actually very reliable, despite the appearance. Why, that gap was one of the reasons why those women were so attached to you."
"Eh? Women?" Fianna asked in surprise.
"Hm? Yes, most of those colleagues I mentioned were women. We were a team that operated mainly in the backline if you haven't already guessed." Fianna shot Milanor a scathing look from beside him after Miss Irina answered her.
"…What? I didn't have anything to do with that fact, did I?"
"Ahaha! Popular as ever, aren't you, Little Miles? You got two pretty girls hanging out with you now? Haha, I guess that's a lot better than with some middle-aged researchers like before," Miss Irina laughed seeing Fianna's attitude from across her seat.
Milanor didn't know what she found funny in this. Maybe she was just teasing him like those older women back then used to do a lot? The other 'pretty girl' she was talking about was currently enjoying her food with no regard to their conversation so far, so he wasn't sure where she got her impression from.
"A-Anyway," Milanor tried to change the topic. "What are you doing here in this rural area, Miss Irina? Isn't your organization based in the Empire? That's a long way from here."
Centurion Empire was some 120 light years distance from this region of the galaxy. Unless you were using the expensive express liners or a one-of-a-kind ship like Helios, travel between these places could take almost a month if you were unlucky. The unstable Krul region was located between them, making the journey even more undesirable.
"Hmm… Great question! My husband works for a shipping company and I am currently accompanying him, you could say. Haah… When I think of how hopeless that man is, I can't help but be worried about leaving him alone," she replied with something completely unexpected.
"H-Husband!? You got married, Miss Irina!?" Milanor never heard any kind of romantic gossip about her when they were in Mod Charlotte. Clearly, this meant that the development happened during the past 5 years.
"Ehehe… You remember Mr. Herzog? Of the survey team? He and I got hitched a few years ago," she answered bashfully.
"…"
"You don't remember him, do you? You know, the lanky man? Usually got pushed around by his superior."
"Him!? That shy, pushover-looking man!?" Milanor had a hard time recognizing the name since that person had a really thin presence. He was the kind of guy that would be often forgotten during call-ups, and sometimes the survey team would come back to the base camp without him.
"Oh my, that was how a kid like you thought of him back then? Pretty harsh, weren't you?"
"W-Well, wasn't that the general opinion when it comes to that guy? I-I'm sure I was not the only one who thinks like that," he anxiously justified his younger self. Hopefully, she would forgive some ridicule toward her husband five years ago. Although it was not like he could remember whether he did that or not.
"Oh, silly you. It's not like I didn't think the same back then. I knew that he was not much of a man before, but… He's a changed man now, you know? He quit his previous job and chose to become a traveling salesman since he's quite good at directions and geography and the like. He works his hardest and is doing his best. Of course I helped him too, but still… He's so much more reliable now," Miss Irina began to boast at length about her husband.
This was not how Milanor expected things would go when he woke up this morning, nor when he stumbled into her at the store earlier. Fianna listened to her rambling with a difficult expression while Naya still looked no different than before. Realizing that she would not be done any time soon, Milanor leaned back in his seat and thought to himself:
'Marriage, huh…'
It was a concept rather foreign for them spacers. As their nomadic lifestyle usually didn't permit a comfortable family life, they seldom engaged in matrimony until they at least reached retirement. Many spacers never build a family at all and spent their whole life traveling the stars until the cosmos claim them. Of course, most of them were still ordinary humans, and they longed for love and connections with other people as much as anyone else.
However, even with these desires budding within them, oftentimes they would be ignored as they could hold the spacers back from their journeys. Some of them would still take lovers, but frequently it would end with just that, nothing more… Milanor's parents' case was one of those rare exceptions.
He still vividly remembered when he discovered a news report about the Milestone couple's exploit, back when he was very little. Milanor never asked them himself about how or when they met, as it would be a strange thing for a little kid to ask their parents. The news report detailed the accomplishment of his father, and at the end, it also explained how he married a gifted scientist woman and had a child with her, a rarity for a freelancer.
It said that Papa Milestone and his lifelong compatriot—Fianna's father, in other words—met Mama Milestone during a collaboration job that they all took at the same time. At the time, Mama Milestone was being helped by a talented engineering woman for her research, and all four of them then worked together.
Milanor's Dad was partnered with his Mom, while Fianna's Pops was with the engineer. Both teams synergized surprisingly well, and the job went very smoothly.
Even after they completed the job, they didn't separate and go on their own way. No, they decided to keep working together as a full team of four. This team worked so well that the already famous Captain Milestone was becoming even more famous.
It didn't take long for feelings of affection to develop between each of them. Milanor's parents fell in love with each other, while Fianna's Pops and the engineer—later, her mother—were the same way. A fateful and miraculous arrangement, their unions were much celebrated within the freelancing community.
Or at least, that was what the news report's supplementary explanation explained. It read like a shady gossip tabloid that delved into a celebrity's love affairs, but for the kid Milanor, it sounded like the unblemished truth.
Either way, it seemed they got the basic facts right, that his and Fianna's parents did indeed meet through a freelancing job. That story became the hopes and dreams of the solitary freelancers that yearned to experience love themselves.
"…You look spaced out. What're you thinking?" A sudden voice broke Milanor out of his reverie. It was Naya, who for some reason was now sitting next to him.
"Huh? What?" He looked around and saw that Fianna, and Miss Irina for that matter, were nowhere to be found.
"Where did they go?"
"To the bathroom. You're so lost in thought that you didn't even register them leaving?"
'They went to the bathroom together?' he thought. It seemed that Milanor was contemplating so deeply that he didn't even notice.
"Well, I guess Miss Irina has some sort of hypnotic ability with her voice."
Naya shrugged hearing his response. "Fia got absorbed with that woman's spiel at some point. Seemed they got along well."
"Really…?"
"Is this okay? Shouldn't we start to get going?"
He looked at a hologram that displayed the time. They were well past morning and soon enough would reach midday.
"Ah, crap, you're right!" Milanor yelled. "I need to tell her to hurry it up…"
They needed to reach Qwattor before it was dark on that planet. Fortunately, right now it was still around dawn in Qwattor City so if they leave now, they would still have plenty of daylight to look around. Milanor didn't want to put an undue burden on their bodies though, so they would have to come back into the ship when it reached evening in the standard time.
He sent a message to Fianna's holotablet telling her to uh… speed it up.